“Yes or no?”
“EnviroBreed is a plant down there. They make these sterile fruit flies to set loose around here. It’s a government contractor. They have to breed the bugs down there ’cause-”
“I know all of that. How come you know?”
“The only reason is that I was involved in setting plans on our operation down there. We wanted a ground Observation Point on the target’s ranch. We went into the industrial parks that border the ranch to look for candidates. EnviroBreed was obvious. American-managed. It was a government contractor. We went to see if we could set up an OP, maybe on the roof or an office or something. The ranch property starts just across the street.”
“But they said no.”
“No, actually, they said yes. We said no.”
“How come?”
“Radiation. Bugs-they got those damned flies buzzing all over the goddamn place. But most of all the view was obscured. We went up on the roof and we could see the ranch all right but the barn and stables-the whole bull-breeding facility-was in line between EnviroBreed and the main ranch facilities. We couldn’t use the place. We told the guy there, thanks but no thanks.”
“What was your cover? Or did you just come out and say DEA?”
“Nah, we cooked something up. Said we were from the National Weather Service on a project tracking desert and mountain wind systems. Some bullshit like that. The guy bought it.”
“Right.”
Corvo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“So, how does EnviroBreed figure into it from this end?”
“My Juan Doe. He had those bugs you were talking about in his body. I think he was probably killed there.”
Corvo turned so he was looking directly at Bosch. Harry continued to watch him in the mirror behind the bar.
“Okay, Bosch, let’s say you’ve got my attention. Go ahead and spin the tale.”
Bosch said he believed that EnviroBreed, which he didn’t even know was across from Zorrillo’s ranch until Corvo told him, was part of the black ice pipeline. He told Corvo the rest of his theory: that Fernal Gutierrez-Llosa was a day laborer who either hired on as a mule and didn’t make the grade or had worked at the bug breeding plant and seen something he should not have seen or done something he should not have done. Either way, he was beaten to death, his body put in one of the white environment boxes and taken with a shipment of fruit flies to Los Angeles. His body was then dumped in Hollywood and reported by Moore, who probably handled everything on this end.
“They had to get the body out of there because they couldn’t bring an investigation into the plant. There is something there. At least, something that was worth killing an old man for.”
Corvo had his arm up on the bar and his face in the palm of his hand. He said, “What did he see?”
“I don’t know. I do know that EnviroBreed has a deal with the feds not to have their shipments across the border bothered with. Opening those boxes could damage the goods.”
“Who have you told this to?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody? You have told no one about EnviroBreed?”
“I’ve made some inquiries. I haven’t told anyone the story I just told you.”
“Who have you made inquiries with? You called the SJP?”
“Yeah. They put out a letter to the consulate on the old man. That’s how I put it together. I still have to make a formal ID of the body when I’m down there.”
“Yeah, but did you bring up EnviroBreed?”
“I asked if they ever heard of him working at EnviroBreed.”
Corvo spun back toward the bar with an exasperated sigh.
“Who did you talk to there?”
“A captain named Grena.”
“I don’t know him. But you’ve probably spoiled your lead. You just don’t go to the locals with this sort of thing. They pick up the phone, tell Zorrillo what you just said and then pick up a bonus at the end of the month.”
“Maybe it’s spoiled, maybe it isn’t. Grena brushed me off and may think that’s it. At least I didn’t go walking into the bug place and ask to set up a weather station.”
Neither spoke. Each one thinking about what the other had said so far.
“I’m going to get down on this right away,” Corvo said after a while. “You have to promise me you won’t go fucking around with it when you get down there.”
“I’m not promising anything. And so far I’ve done all the giving here. You haven’t said shit.”
“What do you want to know?”
“About Zorrillo.”
“All you really gotta know is that we’ve wanted his ass for a long time.”
This time Bosch signaled for two more beers. He lit a cigarette and saw the smoke blur his reflection in the mirror.
“Only thing you have to know about Zorrillo is that he is one smart fucker and, like I said, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he already knows you’re coming. Fuckin’ SJP. We only deal with thefederales. Even them you can trust about as much as an ex-wife.”
Bosch nodded meaningfully, just hoping Corvo would continue.
“If he doesn’t know now, he’ll know before you get there. So you’ve got to watch your ass. And the best way of doing that is not to go. With you, I know, that isn’t an option. The second best way is to skip the SJP altogether. You can’t trust ’em. The pope has people inside there. Okay?”
Bosch nodded at him in the mirror. He decided to stop nodding all the time.
“Now, I know everything I just said went in your ears and out your asshole,” Corvo said. “So what I’m willing to do is put you with a guy down there, work it from there. Name’s Ramos. You go down, say your howdy-dos with the local SJPs, act like everything is nice, and then hook up with Ramos.”
“If this EnviroBreed thing pans out and you make a move on Zorrillo, I want to be there.”
“You will. Just hang with Ramos. Okay?”
Bosch thought it over a few moments and said, “Yeah. Now tell me about Zorrillo. You keep going off on other shit.”
“Zorrillo’s been around a long time. We’ve got intelligence on him going back to the seventies at least. A career doper. One of the bounces on the trampoline, I’d guess you’d call him.”
Bosch had heard the term before but was confident Corvo would get around to explaining it anyway.
“Black ice is just his latest thing. He was amarijuanito when he was a kid. Pulled out of the barrio by someone like himself today. He took backpacks of grass over the fence when he was twelve, made the truck runs when he was older and just worked his way up. By the eighties, when we had most of our efforts concentrated on Florida, the Colombians contracted with the Mexicans. They flew cocaine to Mexico and the Mexicans took it across the border, using the same old pot trails. Mexicali across to Calexico was one of them. They called the route the Trampoline. The shit bounces from Colombia to Mexico and then up to the states.
“And Zorrillo became a rich man. From the barrio to that nice big ranch with his own personalguardia and half the cops in Baja on his payroll. And the cycle started over. He pulled most of his people out of the slums. He never forgot the barrio and it never forgot him. A lot of loyalty. That’s when he got the name El Papa. So once we shifted our resources a little bit to address the cocaine situation in Mexico, the pope moved on to heroin. He had tar labs in the nearby barrios. Always had volunteers to mule it across. For one trip he’d pay one of those poor suckers down there more than they’d make in five years doing anything else.”
Bosch thought of the temptation, that much money for what amounted to so little risk. Even those who were caught spent little time in jail.
“It was a natural transition to go from tar heroin to black ice. Zorrillo’s an entrepreneur. Obviously, this is a drug that is in its infancy as far as awareness in the drug culture goes. But we think he is the country’s main supplier. We’ve got black ice showing up all over the place. New York, Seattle, Chicago, all your large cities. Whatever operation you stumbled over in L.A., that was just a drop in the bucket. One of many. We think he’s still running straight heroin with his barrio mules but the ice is his growth product. It’s the future and he knows it. He’s shifting more and more of his operation into it and he’s going to drive Hawaiians out. His overhead is so low, his stuff is selling twenty bucks a cap below the going rate for Hawaiian ice, or glass, or whatever they call it this week. And Zorrillo’s stuff is better. He’s putting the Hawaiians out of business on the mainland. Then when the demand for this thing really starts to escalate-conceivably as fast as crack did in the mid-eighties-he’ll bump the price and have a virtual monopoly until the others catch up with him.